90s alt rock

Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” Is Always With Me

Almost 30 years later, and the opening piano notes of “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns” still give me chills.

While most songs ebb and flow from the playlist of my life, Mother Love Bone remains a constant. When you find a song that still give you the feels decades later, whisking you away to another time, another place, you hold on–tightly.

No band better bridges the 80s heavy metal era with the emergence of 90s grunge than Sub Pop rejects Mother Love Bone. MLB’s frontman, Andrew Wood, was a fucking legend, and in life and death, a pioneer.

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Confessions of a 90s Alt-Rock Ticket Scalper

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

It was an experiment rooted in greed that was destined not to end well.

As my teenage life became centered around live music, it was clear I needed additional income to support my concert addition. At an average price of $13 a ticket, plus that patented 35% Ticketmaster surcharge, how was this high school kid supposed to get by?

The formula I devised was straightforward: Buy a few extra tickets to a show I was planning to attend anyway, and sell them for enough profit to cover the expense of my ticket.

It was a win-win, making the mass-transit travel and early-morning West Coast Video trips (they were a Ticketmaster outlet and ill-fated VHS rental chain) a bit more tolerable.

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Third Eye Blind “Graduate”

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

I hate clichés. I go out of my way not to use them and not to be one. But clichés are ubiquitous for a reason. Sometimes they can’t be avoided, and sometimes, it can be enjoyable to become one.

So when I turned the volume to high in my forest green 1997 Saturn SC2 coupe and cued up Third Eye Blind’s Graduate, literally minutes after I actually graduated college, I knew exactly what the fuck I was doing.

Cliché Central.

I waited a long time to escape the halls of academia. And while I did enjoy college supremely more than my other educational endeavors, I had no problem waving goodbye and leaving higher ed in the rearview mirror. Not just on that day, but for the rest of my life.

So when Stephan Jenkins posed the question, “Can I graduate?!,” it sounded more like a demand than a quiz, and I could relate. I did the work, now let me the fuck out.

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Ned’s Atomic Dustbin: My First “Real” Concert

By Drew Rosen 2 Comments

You never forget your first.

My first “real” concert, sans adult supervision–standing-room-only–was Ned’s Atomic Dustbin at Roseland Ballroom back on January 22, 1993.

At 16 years old, this was the night that everything changed. I became an addict, hooked on live music. Sure, by this point I had already seen Madonna, C&C Music Factory and Vanilla Ice live, but that was just music.

With Ned’s, my alternative rock universe came into focus as I moved beyond a suburban kid with creative vision and morphed into a young adult who became unafraid to express his uniqueness.

As I looked out across a sea of humanity, bodies hoisted towards the sky, knees flying through the air, I realized we were all more than plaid-shirt wearing “weirdos.”

The Ned’s show was validation that I was not alone.

I found my people.

And the music spoke to me.

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90s alt rock

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